Chapter 38
“Thinking about someone?” The captain’s voice breaks me out of my wandering thoughts, of Peter kissing me breathless in the sky. I’ve got him propped against a boulder in the back of the cave. I’ve been spoon-feeding him cold boar stew for the past several minutes. Normally I’d be pestering him with questions, and he’d be pestering me with insults, but today my mind has been elsewhere.
“What makes you say that?” I ask, the affront obvious in my voice.
The captain’s eyes wander, tracing the golden freckles of my cheek with a precision that makes me feel as if he’s glimpsed more flesh than just what’s on my face. “Because you’re trailing your finger over that Mark of yours like it’s the wooden notches on the casket of a loved one you’re about to bury.”
I wrench my hand from my cheek, embarrassment flooding me.
“You didn’t realize you were doing it, did you?” There’s a taunting condescension in his gaze, but that might just be his face. Now that I think of it, I can’t think of a time he’s ever looked at me like I had any semblance of a brain.
I ignore him, then go back to stirring his stew.
“I used to do it too, you know,” he says, rubbing his thumb against the ruined Mark on his wrist. That’s about all he can manage with his hands right now, because of the rushweed. “Hated what a hold a girl I’d never met had on me.”
Irritation springs up in my chest. “Doesn’t matter. No one ever meets their Mate anyway. Except for you, I guess. And you already told me it was a misfortune.”
“So he’s not your Mate, then?”
My heart drops out. It’s just a question, but I feel like I’m an animal who’s just stepped in a lure and been yanked into the trees. “You could have just asked me directly if you were so interested. No need to trick me into it.”
Captain Astor’s smile is almost sickeningly innocent. “Yes. Because I’m sure a clever girl like you isn’t used to being tricked into things you don’t want to do.”
He holds my stare. A silent challenge.
One that I lose as soon as I let my gaze slip toward the emerald ring on my finger.
“I saw that the winged boy took you on an adventure in the sky earlier.”
My heart skips at the same time a rock forms in my gut. I shove the spoon into his mouth, hoping to shut him up while I regain my composure. His throat bobs as he swallows. Dark stubble flecks his neck, his chin, reminding me of how it felt scraping against my cheek as he commanded my parents to take their own lives.
I would prefer to watch him choke on a piece of boar meat, but that wouldn’t get us any closer to clearing my parents’ names, would it?
“How did you manage to see us from the cave?” I ask, unable to hide my apprehension.
“Well, when you have the misfortune of being chronically poisoned by a pretty girl, you start to entertain yourself by trying to find pictures in the clouds. Imagine my horror when a perfectly good cumulous unicorn was shot through the chest by a pair of lovesick children.”
Something stabs at my gut, but my shoulders relax. I don’t want to think about why I’m glad the captain didn’t hear the entire proposal.
“Why call him the winged boy when you know his name is Peter?”
“Because it bothers you, and that’s the other source of entertainment I’ve found. It’s almost more interesting than finding shapes in the clouds.”
“Yes, well, it’s hard to beat a cumulous unicorn.”
The captain chuckles, his smile lazy. “That was almost funny, Darling, but I’m afraid you stole half the joke from my lips.”
An uncomfortable knot forms in my belly, so I redirect. “How do you know Peter?”
“How do you know I know Peter?”
“Because you said his name in the clock tower that night.”
“What night?”
I shoot the captain a glare, and his grin is just as sharp. “Why don’t you ask him yourself? It appears the two of you have grown…” His gaze lingers on the sparkling ring. “Close. Though, tell me, does he give rings to all the girls he steals from their beds at night?”
My fingers flex in irritation. I don’t even rise to his bait. “Only the ones he steals from clock towers, I’m afraid.”
“Mm.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Get an answer from your lover, and I’ll help you come to a more accurate understanding of the truth based off what he says.”
I direct the spoon toward the captain like it’s one of the pointers my tutors used to use. “I’ll hold you to that.”
“I wouldn’t hope for anything less,” he says, his eyes silently taunting me. But then he has the audacity to add, “Why the headlong rush into matrimony?”
I chew on the edge of my tongue. “That’s not really any of your business, is it?”
The captain ignores my cue to end the conversation. “Oh, come now. We both know swift engagements are the by-product of only two situations: a significant dowry or a child forthcoming.”
I snort. “I assure you, in this case, it’s neither.”
The captain examines me carefully. “You say it with such confidence.”
I turn my attention to stuffing the empty bowl and spoon into my satchel. It doesn’t matter that I’m not looking at him, though. Even the air around the captain curves into a taunting grin, one I don’t have to glimpse to feel creeping over my skin. “You haven’t slept with him, have you?”
Wooden spoons clank as I slam the satchel into the ground. “Must you always be this crass?”
“I’m afraid I must, given your love life—or lack thereof, as the case may be—is all I have to keep me entertained during my solitary confinement.”
My hands are trembling so hard with my eagerness to remove myself from this conversation, I’m struggling to tie the knot securing my satchel.
But the captain isn’t done. “Tell me—what about the winged boy revolts you so much?”
“It’s not for lack of desire, I assure you,” I say, smug satisfaction settling in my belly when the captain has the audacity to look annoyed by my response.
“Well, if you’re denying his advances until marriage, I suppose that explains the ring.”
“At least he respects my decision,” I snap. “Because no one is touching me again until I see a ring on his finger.”
Captain Astor stills, his throat bobbing slightly.
Sand bulges underneath my fingernails as I dig them into the ground to steady myself. Slowly, I feel the pain in the beds of my nails tether me back to reality. Reminding me I’m here, not in my parents’ dark and smoky parlor. Not in the arms of yet another…
“Again?”
I blink. “What?”
The captain’s breathing quickens. “You said no one is touching you again.”
Outside the mouth of the cave, the stars blur together. “You already saw what happened with Lord Credence.”
“But it happened before.”
“I wish that’s all that had happened before,” I say, and I tell myself to end this conversation there, but for some reason, the words start to spill out. Because I’m so angry, furious at the captain for making me remember. Angry enough to pelt him with the grimy details of the past, so he’ll have to sit in my discomfort with me. “When it was time for my coming out into society, my parents relied on my beauty and charm to win over suitors. They knew my Mark would be a hindrance, but that didn’t stop them from assuring me I’d have several proposals to choose from by the end of my first season.
“They were right to assume I’d attract attention. Men were always calling on me, lining up to ask me to dance. We thought our fears that my Mark would drive them away had been all for naught. But then the end of my first season came, and I was without a single proposal. My parents chalked it up to my youth—I was only fifteen at the time. But I knew they were just saying as much to make me feel better.
“My nightmares grew worse after that—almost as bad as when I was a child. Once my second season rolled around, I was more motivated than ever to win a man’s heart. But my motivation couldn’t have matched my mother’s. The night before the season’s first ball, she visited me in my rooms and said it was time that we talked. Woman-to-woman.”
A lump forms in my throat. It feels like a betrayal, telling this story to the person responsible for my mother’s death. But it’s as if the story has taken the reins of my mouth, and I’m simply listening, a bystander like the captain, hanging onto every word.
“She assured me that things would have been different if not for my Mark. That I would have had several proposals the previous year otherwise. As our hopes had proven vain, she suggested it was time we employed a more shrewd approach in securing me a husband.
“My mother said…” I draw a square in the sand with my finger, but then erase it because it makes me think of Michael. “She said there were other ways to entice men, besides good manners and etiquette. I thought…” My throat stings, and I have to talk around the lump swelling in my throat. “I thought she was going to suggest that we lower my neckline. Cut slits into my skirts, which was starting to come into fashion. That wasn’t what she meant.
“There were things a woman could do with a man that could leave him wanting more, later, she said. Things that would leave behind no evidence.” My cheeks go hot, and I flip the collar of my coat up so the captain won’t see. I still don’t know why I’m telling him this, except that suddenly, though I’ve refused to think of the parlor in over a year, I feel as though, if I keep it to myself a moment longer, it will gnaw my flesh from the inside out.
“I told her I didn’t want to have to do those things. Most of the men who courted me in my first season were—well, they hadn’t seemed so bad when I’d thought marriage meant living in the same manor and having a baby magically appear in one’s belly once every few years.” I chuckle nervously.
The captain does not.
“She hugged me. She didn’t want me to have to do any of those things either. But she said once the Shadow Keeper took me away, he would make me do all those things and worse. At least this way, I’d have my mother just outside the door, listening for me to cry out in case the suitor wanted more than we were willing to give him.”
At the sound of the word we, the captain’s jaw bulges.
“That first night, she bullied a man attending the ball to come speak with us in the parlor. I remember having to tug at my collar because the incense my mother was burning made my throat scratchy. The man seemed annoyed to have been cornered by yet another mother wishing him to give up his bachelorhood for the sake of her daughter. My mother went to pour him a drink, but the wine bottle was empty.”
My hands are sweating now, so I rub them on my trousers. “She’d left an empty bottle on the cart on purpose, of course. She jabbered on about how silly she’d been, that she’d have to make a trip to the cellar to get more wine. Before she left, she made sure to mention how long it took for her to make decisions. How if she ended up trapped in the cellar for hours, I was to keep the suitor entertained.”
A tear, salty as the ocean breeze wafting into the cave, scrambles down my cheek. “I did what I was told. When it was over, I just remember racking my brain trying to make sure what I’d let him do was within the parameters of what my mother told me. We waited all week for a proposal, but it never came. I believe my mother threatened him with exposing what he’d done to me, but he told her to go ahead. No one would blame him for not wanting to marry a Marked girl. Exposing him would only ruin my already meager chances of finding a husband.
“I was relieved, to be honest. I thought that would be the end of it, but my mother insisted the flaw was not with the methods, but the suitor. By the next week, she’d found another man to abandon me in the parlor with. She always smiled at them, even afterward. Always beamed at them like they were our last hope.
“I got used to it after a while, but I was relieved when my second season came to a close. I thought it would mean a break, but my parents had other ideas. They made it a ritual to invite over a bachelor for dinner at least twice a week. We’d go back to the parlor, but only after a few drinks, of course.”
My tongue goes parched at the memory of faerie wine. Father wouldn’t let me drink any of it. Not after I almost died from it as a child. But I remember watching it sparkle in the crystal, hating the suitors who got to be rid of their inhibitions when I had to remember everything that happened in that parlor.
I blink back tears. “I got used to it eventually. But then a man came by for dinner, and when he smiled at me, butterflies swarmed in my stomach. When he told jokes, I didn’t have to pretend to laugh. The parlor didn’t seem like such a dreadful way to end the night, and I found myself looking forward to the moment she abandoned us.”
I go silent, the will to form words having died out. I don’t have the energy to tell the captain about that particular suitor—the first night a man’s touch felt pleasant against my skin. I’d cried after he left, just because I hadn’t known women had the capability of enjoying being touched. For the next week, I stalked my parents’ valet, waiting for the letter petitioning my father for my hand.
In the end, all I can bring myself to say is, “He didn’t want to marry me either. So I promised myself no more nights in the parlor. No more letting men touch me. Not until I saw a ring on his finger.”
I glance at the captain, just for a second, waiting for him to mock me. There’s a tick in his jaw, the only movement in his body.
“You shouldn’t have told me that,” he says, and it feels as if my heart is falling out of my chest, all the air being wrung out of my lungs.
Stupid. Stupid of me to open up to him. “Well, I figure better you than anyone else, considering you’ll be dead soon enough,” I practically spit.
The captain stares at me, murder limning every sharp feature. “No,” he says slowly. “I mean you shouldn’t have told me that. Not if you ever wanted me to feel a twinge of guilt about spilling your sorry parents’ blood.”
His words skewer me, twisting and taking bits of my flesh with them on the way out. The manifold facets of my pain fold atop one another, murky and opaque and impossible to differentiate. Is my hatred toward the captain because he killed them, or because he killed them before I grew brave enough to scream at them for what they’d done to me? Did he steal my parents, or my chance at hearing their ardent apologies? And is my hatred for the captain, or have I only directed it toward him because that seems less complicated than aiming it elsewhere?
“Why are you here?” I ask, wrenching my racing thoughts from their destructive path.
“I think you know the answer to that question.”
I grit my teeth, shaking my head. “No, I know you’re here for me. But why? What do you want from me? You’ve already gotten your revenge for whatever it is you think my parents were to blame for.”
“If that’s your subtle way of trying to get me to tell you why I killed your parents—excuse me, had them kill themselves—I’ve met possums that were slyer.”
“Or you could just tell me,” I say, sitting on the ground next to him, a careful distance, then folding my legs over one another. “Wouldn’t that be the best revenge of all? Knowing you spoiled their memory for their daughter they so adored?”
“The best revenge of all was watching them take the blade to their own throats. Besides, it seems as if they already did the spoiling themselves.”
I breathe through the way his words puncture my chest, lodging in my sternum. Slowly but surely, I’m learning not to let his cruelty tie my tongue in knots. “But it’s all you have left now, isn’t it?”
The captain’s eyes flicker with something I can’t quite read. “I already told you, Wendy Darling. You’ll suffer enough as it is. No need to add to your load.”
A chill rattles my bones. The last time Captain Astor predicted my suffering, it had come at his own hands. I find myself clenching the pouch of rushweed powder stuffed in my pocket.
“I see nothing around that might harm me,” I say, placing my words with care.
“That’s because there’s no seeing the shadows when you’re blind.” Captain Astor says it with a smile, though the words have to make it past his clenched teeth.
Now that he’s done with his food, I gather my things to go. It’s clear the captain is done talking anyway. Before I leave, I fish a pinch of rushweed powder out of my bag with the tip of my spoon, then offer it to the captain. He stares at me for a moment, but he must know I’m offering him a chance at dignity by not shoving it in his mouth, because he closes his lips around the edge of the spoon.
His thumb, still stroking his Mating Mark, goes limp.
“So, was it better?” asks the captain on my way out.
I turn around, furrowing my brow in confusion. “Was what better?”
“Whatever it was that the Shadow Keeper persuaded you was so much better than kneeling?”